is really, really weird

about

Jessica Lachenal is a writer, storyteller, editor, and experience designer based in Oakland, California. She seeks to weave emotion, intimacy, wonder, and magic into the experiences and installations she creates.

By day, she is an Assistant Editor at The Mary Sue, where she writes about the intersection of pop culture and feminism. This means she writes about the roles women play in shaping pop culture, including (but not limited to): comics, movies, video games, television, and more. She also manages TMS’ wonderful base of contributors and freelancers.

By night, she works as an experience designer, and is a member of several Bay Area art collectives, including the Living Room Collective and the Elsewhere Philatelic Society. As a member of each of these groups, she’s helped devise, develop, and facilitate various art installations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

In the past, she’s worked for Nonchalance, a situational design agency based in San Francisco. There, she served as an apprentice, filling in roles wherever she was needed to support The Latitude Society. This meant she got to write a lot of fun things like stories, scripts, treatments, songs, and large-scale communications. She helped create and co-edit a publication while managing a volunteer crew in world building and mythos creation. She also worked as interim community manager, serving as liaison between staff and the community, performing community outreach, and fielding support e-mails. Finally, she assisted with design of an in-universe set, working the full timeline from concept to production.

As a freelancer, her writing has been featured on The Mary Sue, The Bold Italic, Model View Culture, and Autostraddle. She has also been published in Frontiers LA magazine. She also reviews and photographs shows for Spinning Platters, a local Bay Area music blog. Finally, she used to work at Voxer as a QA Engineer, breaking cell phones.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact her via the contact page. She would love to work with you!

She hopes that this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.